Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
November 6, 2005

Scripture:

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

For the most part, I don’t much care for the Book of Joshua. It’s one of the Bible’s historical books in which Israel’s wars of aggression against the indigenous peoples of Canaan are said to be the will of God. It’s full of battles and slaughters, all said to be done at God’s behest and with God’s help. I know all that’s part of the Bible, but I’m sorry. Joshua’s God is not the God I know and seek to serve. For the most part, I wouldn’t shed a tear if it were removed from Scripture and relegated to the ancient literature sections of university libraries where it, for the most part, belongs.

But note that I keep saying "for the most part." I keep saying that because there’s at least one passage in Joshua that I love and that I think has a lot to say about our own faith lives today. That is the passage we heard a few minutes ago. In that passage Joshua, Moses’ successor as the leader of the Hebrews, calls on all the people to decide which god or gods they will serve, Yahweh (called in most English translations "the Lord"), or the gods of other people, people of Mesopotamia, Egypt, or the first nations of the land the Hebrews were conquering. Joshua tells them they can choose whatever gods they want; but then he makes one of the great, foundational statements in all of Scripture: "As for me and my household, we will serve the Lord."

The people all insist that they too will serve the Lord. At first, surprisingly, Joshua tells them that they can’t; but they all insist that they will. So Joshua tells them, in the violent imagery that some of the Bible’s many voices so love, that if they make that commitment and fail in it, the Lord will be really angry and will take that anger out on them. Joshua is saying: If you say you’re going to serve this God, you’d better mean it. Now, I don’t think that God’s going to come and smite us every time we fall short in our efforts to serve the Lord. If that were true, we’d all be in deep trouble; but I think this passage makes a valid point nonetheless, or rather several of them. I want to look at two of them briefly this morning.

First, this passage makes the point that faith is a decision, a choice that we make. It isn’t so much belief as belief is commonly understood as it is what Kierkegaard called a "leap of faith." We choose what gods we will serve, and we all serve some god or other whether we know it or not. We choose with our minds. We make a conscious choice; but more importantly we choose with our actions, with how we live our lives. Second, this great passage from Joshua makes the point that our choice has consequences. In our secular society today it is so easy to take faith lightly; but when we’re talking about faith we are talking about ultimate things. A decision of faith is a decision about what we value most. It is a decision about the values that will guide our lives. As Paul Tillich said, it is a decision about our ultimate concern, about that which is more important to us than anything else, that to which we will subordinate everything else. We are free to take faith lightly because we are free Americans and free Christians; but faith truly is not a light matter. It is a profoundly serious matter.

And like any serious matter it has consequences. As I said, I don’t think it has the consequences that Joshua was talking about. Still, faith has consequences. One of the consequences that faith has that I experience most is that it makes demands on us. Faith can give us what the world cannot. It can give us peace, comfort, courage, joy, and hope. But with those great gifts come great demands. If we take it as the serious matter that it is, faith makes demands on how we live our lives, how we treat ourselves and others, how we vote, how we use our time, our talents, and our resources. In faith we know that God has a way God wants us to live. We know that God has a dream for the world, a dream we call the Kingdom of God. And we know that the God we have chosen to serve calls us to work for the realization of God’s dream, of God’s Kingdom, in everything we say and everything we do. God gives us peace for our souls and wants us to respond in lives of service to God through service to God’s creation, through work for the realization of God’s dream of peace and justice for all people.

Those of us who are members and friends of this church have made a decision for God. And we have made another decision beyond that one. We have decided that we will live our lives with God at least in good part in this family of faith. Our participation in this church is one major manifestation of our decision for God. It is one way that we respond to God’s call to us that follows on our decision of faith.

And by now you may have figured out where I’m going with this. Friends, it’s stewardship time again. Faith has consequences, and a decision to live our faith lives in a particular faith fellowship has consequences too. One of those consequences is that the church will call upon you from time to time for financial support. Now of course I know that you already support the church financially. But the church’s financial need is ongoing. It lives in the world, and it is subject as much as any secular institution to economic forces like inflation in general and rising energy prices in particular. Like any secular institution the church has to pay it bills, and it has to pay its professional staff. And so the church needs money. Every year. Every month. Every day. Believe me, I wish it were not so. Before I accepted God’s call to enter professional ministry, you couldn’t have paid me enough to get me on a stewardship committee. I wish it weren’t so, but it is so. The church needs money.

So it’s that time of year again. Can we serve the Lord? Yes, we can. We can serve the Lord in many ways. We can do it by living lives committed to peace and justice for all people. We can do it by caring for one another and, to the extent that we are able, for all of God’s people. And we can do it by supporting this community of faith. Faith has consequences. Stewardship is thinking about and acting on those consequences. As our Conference’s former stewardship associate was fond of saying, stewardship is everything I do after I say I believe. What are you, what am I, going to do now that we’ve said we believe? Amen.